🎙️ From Vernon Mount to Vaucluse: Exile, Empire & What Remains

Undercover Irish – Episode 2

Henry Browne Hayes was sentenced to transportation for life.

But exile did not humble him.

In this second part of the series, we follow Hayes from Ireland to Australia — from convict ship to colonial estate — and examine how power adapts even when it is supposedly punished.

Along the way, we encounter Irish political prisoners, Freemasonry in the early colony, the Rum Rebellion, a dramatic shipwreck, and the unfinished legacy of both empire and rebellion.

And at the centre of it all remains Mary Pike.

🔎 In This Episode

• The convict ship Atlas and Hayes's bribed passage
• Irish political prisoners transported after 1798
• Tristram Moore and other United Irishmen in New South Wales
• Early Freemasonry in Australia
• The attempted lodge of 1803
• Vaucluse House and its convict origins
• The Rum Rebellion (1808)
• Governor William Bligh and the New South Wales Corps
• Hayes's exile to Newcastle (Coal River)
• The role of Governor Lachlan Macquarie
• The controversial pardon
• The wreck of the Isabella in 1813
• Joseph Holt's account of the disaster
• Hayes's return to Cork
• The long shadow over Mary Pike's life
• Modern-day legacies in Ireland and Australia